


ten thousand minutes 'til i get home

by happy_hufflepuffle



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Constellations, M/M, Mythology References, POV Draco Malfoy, Post-Battle of Hogwarts, Summer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-25
Updated: 2019-06-25
Packaged: 2020-05-19 08:23:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19353172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/happy_hufflepuffle/pseuds/happy_hufflepuffle
Summary: After the war, his family in pieces, Draco hides away in the safety of Hogwarts. He's not the only one."...somewhere out by the lake, someone is sending sparks dancing across the surface of the black water. The lake ripples and huge tentacles emerge, reaching up and up and up until Draco is sure they will snatch the moon from where it hangs full and low in the sky.The trail of sparks circle the Giant Squid, wrapping around its body and illuminating pink flesh and dark purple suckers. It's a strangely beautiful sight and Draco is enthralled. Then the lights all blink out at once and the darkness in their wake seems almost alive - hungry and all-encompassing - and for a moment he thinks he can see an entire galaxy shining in the centre of the blackness."





	ten thousand minutes 'til i get home

 

> _Tail lights and runways_  
>  _We put on a brave face_  
>  _We write down the details to make us feel safe_  
>  _Cold on the mattress_  
>  _Sad and alone_  
>  _I think it's ten thousand minutes 'til I get home_  
> 
> _Someday we're gonna get to do all the things that we wanted to_
> 
> _Never wanna say goodbye  
>  _You always see through my disguise_  
>  _You're the one who breaks my heart right_  
>  _You tear me up and wreck my dreams_  
>  _I hold your hand when I'm asleep_  
>  _I don't mind falling for a lifetime_  
>  _'Cause you break my heart right__
> 
> _-_ James Bay, _Break My Heart Right_

 

 

After the war, after the trial, Draco spends his days alone in a tower in the only place that ever felt like home to him. The sky above Hogwarts is beautiful at night, a sight he never got to see during all the years he lived amongst the green, murky light of a dormitory under the lake. His old dorms are offered to him upon his return but he surprises both McGonagall and himself by asking for a tower room.

"Just until term starts." McGonagall says. Draco is just grateful that she even allows him to return, although he suspects Dumbledore's portrait may have had a hand in it all.

That, and the fact he doesn’t have a wand.

The room she gives him is an old astronomy tower, long out of use, with floor to ceiling windows, spider-webbed corners and a glass door leading to a small balcony covered in curse-damaged vines.

When the door shuts behind her, he has to take deep breaths to calm the rising feeling of panic. It's an automatic response to doors closing, latches locking, dark rooms and long hallways where angry words and echoes of curses still linger like smoke.

He doesn't sleep the first night.

* * *

The castle is still scarred, Draco discovers during his first week of roaming around it at midnight when sleep evades him (he avoids one particular part of the seventh floor, where a wall that used to transform into a door is now permanently charred black and useless). He stumbles across multiple classrooms of broken artefacts, violent gouges carved into walls, corridors where the acrid smell of dark magic hangs heavily in the air and brings disturbing images from the previous year to his mind. Ghosts often appear out of nowhere, the new ones still figuring out how to move without vanishing through the floors and walls, and he frequently has to turn away when he sees faces that look slightly too familiar.

Everything reminds him of loss.

There's a sadness in the castle that flows through the walls, surges underfoot and seeps into his veins like ice. _My little ice prince_ , his mother used to call him when he was younger. It was his pale, angular features and white-blond hair that started her teasing and he never really took her seriously. Now he thinks about the cold running through his veins, his perpetually near-blue lips, the shivers that wrack his body even when he wears coats, and wonders how true her words have become.

"What do you want?" she had asked him before he left, the first time she had spoken in weeks of floating in and out of rooms like a silent spectre. "You can still have a future, Draco. What do you want?"

"I want-" he had said and then stopped.

_I want to cry. I want to be brave. I want to be alone. I don't want to feel lonely anymore. I want to apologise. I want a life without a Dark Lord and a Dark Mark and war. I want to turn back time to my first year of school and not worry about any of the stupid insignificant things I held so highly and shake the hands of Potter and his friends without prejudice._

"I want to be happy." he told her eventually and she had rested one smooth, cold hand against his cheek and smiled sadly.

She was the last thing he saw before he stepped into the fire and disappeared into the swirl of green flames. If he was an ice prince, she was an ice queen, a white silhouette against the dark walls of Malfoy Manor, beautiful and broken and fragile and strong all at once.

* * *

Draco discovers the hidden room in his second week. He's wandering down a long-forgotten hallway with only torchlight to illuminate the way, feet sunk into plush red carpet, as portraits blatantly stare and mutter, when he sees a tapestry ripple in a slight draught. His first instinct is to tense and he automatically reaches for a wand that is no longer there. But there's no one behind the heavy fabric when he pushes it aside.

The room is barely bigger than a broom closet, especially with the bookcase that takes up the entire back wall. It's empty but for a single piece of parchment. _Stars and Planets_ the title reads in looping script, then below it: _or, Doodles and Definitions._

Draco picks it up. It's covered in scribbled words, half-finished facts, detailed drawings of dark skies and the moon's phases and bright stars speeding across the pages then, at the bottom and underlined twice, a definition.

_Caldera (noun): a large volcanic crater, especially one formed by a major eruption leading to the collapse of the mouth of the volcano._

Draco thinks of something dark and malevolent poisoning his heart, spreading through him like a cancer - the mark on his arm a malignant tumorous growth. He thinks of a war that killed innocent people, ripped families apart, turned parents and children against each other. A blinding, exploding eruption of a war that tore both him and the world he knew into pieces, then put everything back together all wrong. The words of a muggle rhyme come to him suddenly: _Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall..._

He looks at the paper again. _Formed by a major eruption leading to the collapse of the mouth of the volcano._

He takes the parchment with him.

* * *

The next time he visits the room, a magazine and potion sit on the shelf. He wonders why it's so thin until he realises pages have been neatly removed. The front cover and the contents page both have black marks covering everything except the magazine name and an article page reference.

 _Siberious Sprout's Guide To Magical Gardening_ , the cover declares. The remaining pages inside are a list of gardening charms (of which several about reversing and repairing curse damage are circled) and potion recipes. He glances at the potion on the bookshelf. It certainly looks innocent enough but he's lived with Dark Magic for such a long time that he knows not to blindly trust innocent-looking things.

It's only once Draco is staring at the unmoving face of the stone gargoyle that he remembers he doesn't know the password.

McGonagall must have a charm that senses someone's presence because the statue shifts anyway, twisting to reveal a staircase. Draco hesitantly steps onto the gleaming wood and startles slightly when it begins moving upward. He has to fight down the rising panic again when the gargoyle reseals the entrance. _Constellation, a group of stars forming a recognisable pattern. Cosmos, the universe seen as a well-ordered whole. Astral, relating to or resembling the-_

"Mr Malfoy."

Draco shivers involuntarily at the title. It brings to mind the imposing figure of his youth, tall and broad, stern, disciplinary. A cruel man with cruel punishments and a cruel, bloodthirsty desire for power, eclipsed only by the Dark Lord. A man he only ever called Father, never Dad or any other warmer term. A man Draco never saw cry until his father was forced to his knees on the floor of a courtroom and sentenced to life in Azkaban.

Wordlessly, Draco holds the potion and magazine out to McGonagall.

"What is this?"

For a moment, Draco contemplates weaving a fabrication that will leave his room a secret. It's become an escape, a bubble of mystery and safety. But not only is he sick of deceit, but he’s just so damn _tired_ so he lets the words spill out and watches the Headmistress vacantly as various indecipherable expressions flicker across her face.

"And you brought it here?" she asks at the end, her voice tinged with an emotion that Draco can't read. He nods.

"That's curious." she murmurs, looking at him thoughtfully.

"What is?"

"Nothing you need to worry about. There aren’t any curses on these, you're fine to take them."

"And the room?" Draco asks, clutching his potion and parchment tightly as desperate hope and fear clash in his chest and claw at his throat.

"I don't think the room is doing any damage, is it?" There's almost a smile on her lips as she says it and Draco feels a surge of unexpected warmth for her.

"Thank you." he says brokenly, hovering at the top of the staircase.

"Draco," she says it uncertainly, his first name foreign in her mouth, "If you ever need-"

She breaks off. Draco tries to reply, to thank her again, or perhaps to apologise even though all the apologies in the world will never be enough, but his words stick in his throat.

McGonagall somehow seems to understand his helplessness because she nods slightly. "Off you go," she tells him gently. "It's nearly two o'clock. You should be asleep."

"I can't." he whispers quietly, frantically, suddenly seized with a strange need to confide in her. McGonagall looks at him.

"I can’t either." she says eventually and gives him a sad smile that reminds Draco of green flames and ice queens and painful goodbyes.

* * *

Two days later, another piece of parchment appears on the shelf:

_ad astra per aspera - to the stars through difficulties._

Draco carries it back to his room and attaches it to the back of his door next to the other one.

* * *

The potion works. The vines' colour changes from sickly yellow to verdant green and they grow and grow until they outgrow the lattice and tumble down the tower like a waterfall. Draco spends hours in the library researching them, baffled by their voracious growth rate, odd leaves and peculiar lack of buds or flowers. He finds nothing and the vines slowly keep growing, twisting their way over-top his balcony and crawling across the castle walls. 

McGonagall only says "How curious." when he asks her advice, and pokes a rapidly unfurling leaf on one of the branches that are attempting to sneak through her window.

"But what does it mean?" he begs but she just smiles mysteriously and offers him a lemon drop.

(She is Dumbledore's replacement in more ways than one, Draco thinks wryly.)

The vines continue to grow for two months without blossoming, covering several of his windows and turning his room green when the sun shines through them. His gifts from the tapestry room accumulate too: he runs out of space on his door and starts attaching the paper to all available wall space until the room smells faintly of fresh parchment and ink; books pile up into a towering stack on his bedside table and spill out over his floor; magazine pages jostle for space amongst the crammed walls.

He starts opening the windows and balcony door, and warm June breezes rush in and send paper fluttering lazily. The spiders leave their webs abandoned in favour of the lush greenery outside and birds nest amongst the branches. Vines begin snaking their way indoors until they climb up his bed posts and form a waterfall of hanging tendrils that he has to twist around the posts each morning.

"Why are you doing this?" he asks them as he winds strands back into place after spending the night reading through the Herbology section of the Hogwarts library. The vines merely quiver teasingly and the spiders outside start spinning question marks into their webs.

* * *

Sleep still eludes him.

His bed is comfortable, the sheets soft and cool in contrast to the balmy summer evenings, but whenever he closes his eyes, images flash behind his eyelids: Nagini's sinewy mass slithering along his dining table as her fangs gleam white in torchlight; Professor Burbage's body suspended in the air by invisible ropes, her broken whimpers of _please, please, no_ and the scream that ripped its way out of her throat as she was killed; his mother’s scars, ugly against her translucent skin, inflicted every time Draco failed; the eerie sensation of evil bleeding through the walls of his childhood home; the darkness of his room as somewhere in the Manor he heard his mother crying softly; vomiting in the middle of the night due to the sickening mix of scents - the cloying rich smell of blood, the bitter sharpness of Dark Magic, the odour of badly rotten meat that leaked out from behind Greyback's door and poisoned the air.

The reminder of the smell of Malfoy Manor at the height of the Dark Lord's reign never fails to make him retch and stumble to the balcony to take deep breaths of clean, cool night air.

He's never seen the night skies here in summer before. All the stars look closer, brighter, bigger, and some nights in a sleep-deprived daze, he reaches out his hand as if it were possible to pluck them from the sky. Books on the night sky start appearing in the tapestry room and he learns to identify countless constellations, including his namesake. It's peaceful out there in the dark - owls hooting softly, vines gently curling around his arms, warm air ruffling his hair and caressing his skin, and the magnitude of the rest of the galaxy above him.

* * *

 _Bolide,_ a piece of parchment says on the last night of June _, a bright meteor that explodes in the atmosphere._

When Draco brings it back to his room he realises that somewhere out by the lake, someone is sending sparks dancing across the surface of the black water. The lake ripples and huge tentacles emerge, reaching up and up and up until Draco is sure they will snatch the moon from where it hangs full and low in the sky.

The trail of sparks circle the Giant Squid, wrapping around its body and illuminating pink flesh and dark purple suckers. It's a strangely beautiful sight and Draco is enthralled. Then the lights all blink out at once and the darkness in their wake seems almost alive - hungry and all-encompassing - and for a moment he thinks he can see an entire galaxy shining in the centre of the blackness.

The vines pluck parchment off the wall and carry it to him as they wind around his arms and legs like a cat. _Black Hole: a region of space having a gravitational field so intense that no matter or radiation can escape._

When the unknown figure comes into sight, he has to rub his eyes to check they’re not deceiving him.

He's been the only constant resident in the castle for four months when Harry Potter appears at the Great Lake in the middle of the night, trailing sparks like stardust.

* * *

Paper aeroplanes soar lazily through the air (seemingly exhausted by the sudden heatwave that has appeared overnight), vines twisting to make hoops for them to fly through, when Draco hears a noise coming from below the balcony. The planes freeze, hovering expectantly around his head, and one gets crushed by an over-excited vine.

Draco leans over the edge of the greenery obscuring the railing to investigate, vines circling protectively around his waist to prevent him from falling.

"I heard you were here." Potter says dispassionately from his own balcony, looking up at him with a sort of blank detachment that gives Draco a painful jolt, an unpleasant sensation akin to missing a step on a staircase.

"Okay." Draco says and then stands back upright, unsure of how to talk to this new Potter with the hollow eyes and slumped shoulders and sadness written into every curve and angle of his face. He sits on the mat of vines instead and counts constellations and feels Potter sitting somewhere below him, silent and unreachable and a million miles away in a galaxy of his own.

 _Aphelion_ , is what the room gives him that night, _the point in the orbit of a planet, asteroid, or comet at which it is farthest from the sun._

* * *

The following night he receives _Protostar: a young stellar object that derives its luminosity from the conversion of gravitational energy to thermal energy_ and he turns and sprints, nearly throwing himself over the edge of his balcony in his haste to check on Potter, who is perched on the railing and looking down into the darkness below.

"What do you want, Malfoy." Potter says vacantly, not even bothering to look up. A new line appears on the parchment below the first ( _Geodesic: the path an object will follow through spacetime in the absence of external forces_ ) and a few vines snake around Potter's waist and fasten his legs to the iron poles of the balcony.

"Funny, Malfoy." Potter says, sounding not at all amused, and still fixated on the inky, starless space that stretches between his seat and the distant ground.

"It's not me." Draco says, as the vines on his own balcony pat his limbs comfortingly.

"What?" Potter says and finally tears his gaze away to look up at Draco.

"I don't know why they're like this." he tells him honestly, frowning as the vines slowly begin to release Potter.

"What." Potter says again, looking down and absently flicking a curled leaf.

"They started growing two months ago and they won't stop."

Potter looks back up then and something sparks briefly in his eyes. "Why did they start growing in the first place?"

He sounds almost interested. _Keep him talking,_ Draco thinks. _Anything to keep him from looking at the ground._

"There was this potion-" It's the wrong thing to say. He can actually see the shutters crashing down, the walls coming back up.

"Why am I not surprised, Malfoy." Potter says and it's mean, ugly. The vines rush to form a barrier around Draco, as if they could stop the words from seeping into his skin and wrapping themselves in a vice grip around his heart.

He pulls back sharply and slides down the stone wall of the castle, uneven rocks scraping roughly at his thin pyjamas. His throat is choked, burning. The stars are especially bright tonight.

 _cryovolcanism_ , says the parchment a vine plasters to Draco's face. _low temperature volcanism in which the magmas are composed of molten ice._

"Malfoy." Potter says eventually from somewhere below him. "Malfoy."

The stars start to hurt his eyes so he looks down into the lake instead, where a million reflections glimmer in the dark water.

"Malfoy." Potter says again, and Draco tips his head back and cries silently.

* * *

"Malfoy," Potter says again the next night, as Draco is curled up in the vines reading an astrology book. "Malfoy, I know you're there."

He wants to say something snarky back, something biting that will frustrate Potter, but all insults stick in his chest like glue and he leans over and says "What?" instead.

Potter looks surprised.

"What do you want, Potter." Draco says, already exhausted.

"Why won't you fight back?"

The question surprises both of them, Draco thinks.

He's quiet for a long time. "What's the point?" he says eventually, running a hand absently along the vines.

"But, but, you have to." Potter says suddenly and he sounds close to tears. "Because - it's the only normal thing left and I can't lose this too."

And then he's crying in earnest, silent tears that roll down his face and fog up his glasses. All at once, Draco is unexpectedly terrified for him. The Potter he knew would never cry in front of anyone, let alone Draco. This new, strange creature who looks like Potter and talks like Potter is missing some vital spark, and Draco feels its absence in his own chest as an almost physical pain. He leans over further. _This world has crushed us both. It isn’t okay and it never will be_ , he wants to say. Or maybe, simply, _I’m sorry._

"Do you want a book?" he says instead.

Potter looks even more surprised than when Draco appeared but he nods slowly anyway. Draco pushes himself up and turns to get one of the many books that cover his floor.

 _Romeo and Juliet_ is what he drops over the edge of his balcony.

"You read Shakespeare?" Potter says confusedly. "But it's a muggle book."

Draco gives him a weak, sad smile, more of a twist of the lips than anything. "There's a lot you don't know about me, Potter."

Something sparks again in the back of Potter's eyes. Draco goes to turn away, go back inside, but Potter stops him.

"Stay," he says. "Please. I, I don't want to be alone." He ducks his head as if the vulnerability of his words open him up too much.

"Okay." Draco says.

Potter looks up and the spark flares brighter and Draco thinks how dangerous it is to burn a lighted match in drought season.

"I just have to do something first," he tells him. "I'll be back soon."

Potter nods, summoning pillows from his room to make his stone balcony more comfortable.

 _parallax,_ the room gives Draco, _the displacement in the apparent position of a nearby star caused by the changing location of Earth in its orbit._

* * *

It becomes a routine. Every night when Draco goes out on his balcony, Potter is out on his.

A week later, Potter finishes _Romeo and Juliet_ and startles Draco from where he's flat on his back staring at the stars.

"They're not so different," he says suddenly and Draco jolts upright. "Like, different families, obviously, but they're just two kids who want peace." There's something in his voice that has Draco listening intently. "They didn't know what they were doing, but they still tried. It wasn't their fault, it was the people around them. Who knows, maybe in a different life they could've been... something else than they were."

They're not talking about _Romeo and Juliet_ anymore.

Draco eases himself back down and takes a deep, careful breath. "Maybe, in this life, they could... have a second chance?"

It's quiet. It's so so quiet and Draco's heart nearly beats out of his chest.

"They both wanted peace," Potter says. "Didn't they?"

"Yes." Draco says emphatically as a tidal wave of emotion floods his body. "Yes."

"And maybe, after everything, they can finally have that?"

"I hope so." he says quietly into the night sky. It feels so dangerous to hope, like he's balanced on a knife edge and any moment he could slip.

"I do too."

Something huge shifts in the atmosphere. The world tilts and changes and moves and Draco is lying on a balcony as Harry Potter lies somewhere below him and they're right in the eye of the storm and everything is silent and loud and beautiful.

 _Singularity_ , says the messy scrawl on a piece of parchment from the tapestry room, _the point where a mathematical expression or equation becomes meaningless, such as a fraction whose denominator approaches zero._

* * *

"I never see you." Potter says after they've spent a month relearning everything they knew about each other in near-silence.

"Hmm?"

"I never see you." Potter repeats. "We talk about everything but I never see your face."

"Come on up then." Draco says jokingly and then runs to the edge of his balcony when Potter says "Okay."

"You're going to fall," he says anxiously. "Oh Merlin, you're going to fall. You shouldn't climb-"

Potter hauls himself over the ledge.

"Oh Merlin." Draco says again faintly.

Potter grins and Draco loses his breath because Potter looks like himself again.

“Hello.” says Potter, “Fancy seeing you here.”

“It is my balcony,” Draco says, but Potter just laughs.

"What do you do up here?" he asks, looking around. "There's no books or anything."

"Actually," Draco says quietly, "I stargaze."

"Would you-" Potter stops then restarts. "Would you mind- if I joined you?"

"Okay."

They lie down on the vines with their heads next to each other and their legs stretched out in opposite directions. They don’t touch. Draco's long, white-blond hair is a stark contrast against the dark of Potter's and he wonders how odd the sight would look to an observer.

“I like the stars.” he whispers into the dark, because everything is so quiet and strange and he feels infinite and unreal. “They look so close and yet they’re so distant.”

“Like people.” Potter says, and the pain in his statement catches Draco off guard. 

“Like people.” he agrees and then they’re both silent for a long time.

* * *

“I don’t feel like I have a purpose anymore.” Potter says out of nowhere, a week later when they’re lying out on Draco's balcony.

“Hmm?” Draco says, still focused on deciphering the meaning of the latest definition ( _nova: a star that suddenly becomes thousands of times brighter and then gradually fades to its original intensity_ ).

“I don’t feel like I have a purpose anymore.” Potter repeats. “There's nothing I have to do anymore. Voldermort's gone. Like, for good. What am I supposed to do now?"

“Maybe your purpose should be to have no purpose.” Draco suggests.

Potter huffs out a laugh. "That doesn't even make sense. Besides, surely there's things I should be doing instead of hiding from the world."

“Don't you think it's time to stop being The Boy Who Lived and start being A Boy Who Lives? You've already saved the wizarding world. You don't owe them anything."

“I-” Potter stops. “I didn't save everyone.”

"Oh shut up." Draco says, but it's not unkind. "What you mean is that you couldn't save everyone. Every war has its casualties, Potter."

"Here," Draco points to a constellation. “That’s Draco,” he says, drawing the outline with his finger. “My namesake."

"Where?"

Draco moves his hand into Potter's line of sight and traces the stars again.

"It's the dragon known as Ladon who guarded the Garden of the Hesperides where Hera kept her golden apples. Some versions of the story say Hercules killed him, others that he merely sneaked past."

"What do you think?" Potter asks.

"Hmm?"

"Which version do you believe?"

"I think it's most likely that Hercules killed him. That’s what Greek heroes do best: killing. But I like to imagine that Ladon lived. The world already has enough death."

Potter stands and shoots him a curious little half smile that Draco can't quite decipher. "You're strangely wise, Draco." he says quietly, before climbing back over the edge of the balcony. Draco stays on the balcony and stares at the stars for a long time before he realises.

 _Draco_ , Potter had said. _Draco_.

* * *

He is startled the next evening when an owl swoops into his room, the flap of its wings sending parchment flying into a paper tornado, and he hurries to detach the letter from its leg. 

 _Dear Draco,_ the letter reads in familiar script, and he has to sit down abruptly. _I hope this letter finds you well. One often finds that solitude is a most effective healer, and the grounds of Hogwarts are a safe haven for many. The house elf prepared apple pie for dessert and I must confess, I could not eat it without thinking of you. I do so hope you are well, darling. This house is so empty without you. I know you may not be ready to write to me just yet so I do not expect a reply. Just know that I love you, my darling. Love, Mother._

Draco neatly folds the letter. His mind begins to fill with gruesome images in riotous colour so he folds it again. And again. He must keep folding it because at some point, gentle hands pry his own away. Faintly he becomes aware of someone saying his name. Something is placed in his hand and, mindlessly, he raises it to his mouth. It’s sweet and rich and gradually he realises it’s chocolate. _Draco,_ someone is still saying. _Draco._

Colours blur into reality then begin to sharpen into objects. Draco lists them silently to reorient himself. _Bed, vines, wall, parchment, wall, vines, Harry, carpet, door, vines, bed, wall-_

“Potter.” he says, his brain beginning to function again.

“Hi.”

“Potter.”

“Erm, yeah. Uh, do you want some water or something?”

“What are you doing here?”

He looks sheepish. “You weren’t on the balcony. I-” he stops.

“What?”

“I, uh, was worried.”

“Oh.”

Draco looks away from the palpable concern in Harry’s eyes and down at his hands. Drops of red blood are welling up in a series of shallow paper cuts that run diagonally across the pads of his fingers. He brings them to his mouth and winces at the metallic taste. It reminds him of sixth year, curses rebounding in a cold bathroom, the same taste of iron as he lay choking on his own blood amidst a haze of pain. Everything begins to fade out again but Harry lays one warm hand just above his knee and he slams back into the present because it’s the first time ever that he’s touched him softly.

“Should I get McGonagall?” 

Draco hesitates. “No, I- I think I’m alright.”

“Okay,” Harry says. Draco turns to look at him. They’re close enough - and the moon is bright enough - that he can make out the faint scattering of freckles along Harry’s cheekbones and see the long dark lashes that frame his worried eyes. He quickly looks down when Harry’s eyes flick to meet his, staring instead at the hand resting on his thigh.

Harry must follow his gaze because he snatches his hand away as if he’s been burned. “Sorry,” he says. “I, uh, I’ll go. Sorry.”

He stands so fast that he nearly falls and hurries towards the balcony door. 

“Wait.” Draco says, but Harry doesn’t seem to hear him. “Wait,” he says again, louder this time then, when Harry still doesn’t pause, “Harry.”

Harry freezes, a dark outline against millions of stars. 

“Don’t go.” Draco says. “Stay. I have, uh, books? We could read or something?”

He feels like a five year old again, childlike and unsure, offering up small tokens in a desperate attempt to make friends, to convince others to like him. 

Gradually Harry’s shoulders lower. He slowly turns around and silently makes his way back over. Draco stands and gathers the blankets from the bed. There’s too many to hold comfortably and they drape from his arms and pool around his feet like a tide.

“Do you want to-” he finds himself flushing and hopes it doesn’t show in the moonlight. “Do you want to build a blanket fort?”

Harry laughs suddenly, a short, surprised bark. His eyes spark and Draco’s heart thumps heavily. 

“Sure,” Harry grins, already reaching out to take a sheet. “Do you have any chairs?”

They end up building it out on the balcony, the vines providing leafy rafters for them to hang sheets over, and cushions scattered along the floor. Harry climbs back down to his room to get more blankets and Draco takes the opportunity to sneak away to the tapestry room. 

 _Solstice_ , is written on a lone piece of parchment. _When the sun is at either its highest or lowest point in the sky at noon, when day is longest and shortest respectively._

The blanket fort is finished when he returns.

“Sorry,” Harry says apologetically, appearing out from underneath. “I didn’t know where you were so I figured I’d just finish it.”

There’s an obvious question in his words but Draco doesn’t acknowledge it, ignoring the guilt shifting under his ribs. _You have nothing to feel guilty about,_ he reminds himself. _It’s just a room._

“Not worried, were you?” he jokes weakly, but he can hear how feeble it sounds.

“I’m always worried about you.” Harry says, heart-achingly honest.

“Oh.” Draco says, more of a huff of breath than a word.

“Come on in.” Harry says, stretching out a hand and nearly upsetting the precariously balanced structure. Draco’s lips curve, cheeks stretch, eyes squint. All of a sudden he realises he’s smiling. Properly smiling for the first time in months. It’s addictive. He feels his grin widen and watches Harry mirror his expression. Something in his chest lifts and, feeling as if he’s floating, he bends down and follows Harry into the fort.

It’s pretty inside - prettier than he expected. A rug covers the floor but underneath, pillows provide cushioning against the lumpy branches of the vines that cover the balcony. Two larger bed pillows are propped against the lump of dark green that, presumably, the balcony railings are somewhere inside. Tiny lights twinkle in the vines and Harry has stacked books by the entrance. Despite the obvious impermanence of the fabric hut, he feels infinitely more safe inside its fragility than he ever has in the solidity of Malfoy Manor. 

“Is it okay?” Harry asks. Draco turns to him, still smiling. 

“It’s perfect, Harry.” he says and, surprising both of them, he lunges forward to wrap Harry in a hug. 

Harry’s whole body seems to radiate heat. Despite their messy history, Draco doesn’t mind being held by him. In fact, he finds himself liking it. The feeling of another warm body pressed against his own, the scent of Harry (something woody, sweat, the electric scent of magic), the way Harry’s arms automatically wrap around his waist and shoulders. It’s the most contact he’s had in a long time and he feels almost giddy off of it. 

Draco eases out of the embrace and sinks back against the pillows, watching Harry cautiously. Harry merely crawls across and settles against the pillow beside him. They lie in silence. In his hand, Draco is still clutching the scrap of parchment.

Like all the others, it feels like a hint. Subtle clues upon clues, lining his walls and windows, teasing at the edge of his mind, always present. The only thing he knows for sure is that it has something to do with Harry. _As does everything,_ he thinks. The thought washes over him, simple and life-altering. It’s as if he’s risen out of his body, looking down at the strange sight of him and Harry lying pressed together; at their extraordinary present; their tangled past; the unknown future; the twists and turns that brought them together, flung them apart, then drew them to this point in time. And maybe it’s the lack of sleep but for a moment he can see another universe in which everything is different: the worst Dark wizard in the history of the Wizarding World is Grindelwald; Harry is performing his first wandless magic (Lily’s flower pots launching from the windowsill and spinning overhead like a galaxy), and James and Lily Floo everyone they know in their excitement; Narcissa and Draco make pumpkin pies in the kitchen every week, flour everywhere and Celestina Warbeck crooning on the wireless, and Lucius walks in smiling and scoops Draco up into his arms; Harry’s eleventh birthday, a Snitch-shaped cake and James pretends he isn’t crying at the thought of Harry going away; the train station and Draco meets Harry for the first time. Harry isn’t the Chosen One, he’s just a boy and he’s bright and beautiful and so full of life (and Draco’s heart stops completely and restarts); they share a carriage and chocolate frogs, and a bushy-haired girl and freckled boy with dirt on his nose, along with Pansy, join them; the Great Hall and Draco is put in Slytherin and Harry slides into the seat next to him and says _guess we’re going to be friends then_ ; living in the same dorm; sitting by the fire, watching the merpeople make faces against the glass (and pulling faces back); holidays at each other’s houses; snowball fights in the courtyard; their first kiss, drunk on smuggled firewhiskey, and then their (much more sober) second on their first date; their first fight, break-up, and eventual make-up; their first _I love you_ ; their first time; their first house- 

“Draco.”

Draco turns to the side. Harry’s watching him amusedly. “Where’d you go?” he asks.

 _Everywhere,_ Draco wants to say. _And I saw the inevitable._ But instead he smiles and says, “Nowhere important.”

* * *

“Tell me something I don’t know about you.” Draco says later that night, pulling the blanket up further as the air grows colder. 

Harry rolls onto his back and exhales, his breath ruffling the sheet above their heads. “Happy or sad?” he asks, and Draco thinks _what a tragedy that our lives have become divided between the two._

“Anything.” he says.

Silence falls as Harry thinks. “Okay,” he says eventually. “It has nothing to do with the war.”

“Even better.” Draco says and Harry laughs.

“When I was eleven,” he says, “I smuggled a dragon out of Hogwarts.”

“That one I saw in Hagrid’s hut?” Draco says, feeling the now-familiar guilt coil in his chest. Harry tips his head to the side. 

“I know what you’re thinking, Draco,” he says quietly. “It’s not your fault. I would’ve done the same- well, actually, I probably would’ve tried to capture it myself and ended up in the hospital wing.”

The guilt-serpent vanishes and Draco finds himself laughing.

“Anyway,” Harry continues, “Norberta-”

“Wait, the dragon was called _Norberta_?”

“Yes,” Harry says. “Now shush. Stop interrupting. Norberta was in a cage and we hid her under the invisibility cloak…”

Draco wants to ask about the cloak but decides it’s probably wise to wait for some other time.

“Now tell me something.” Harry insists, after Norberta has flown off into the starry night on the back of Charlie Weasley’s broom.

“Like what?” Draco asks, his mind full of Dark Marks and Death Eaters and cold Manor hallways.

“Your happiest memory.” Harry says, rolling onto his back again and closing his eyes in preparation.

“Christmas,” Draco says instantly. “When I was seven. Father was at work all day so Mother and I decorated the tree together. We iced cookies and I watched her hang tinsel with her wand. I got my first broomstick that Christmas, and Mother, Father and I played Seekers for hours. It snowed and snowed and we kept playing until my fingers nearly froze to the handle of my broom.” 

Draco can vividly remember nearly every detail of that holiday, from the lines upon lines of Christmas cards strung up between the rafters, to the broomstick-shaped package that he couldn’t stop staring at, to his mother catching the snitch, blonde hair whipping around her head, eyes sparkling and cheeks glowing, and his father sweeping her into a kiss. _Stop, that’s gross,_ Draco had complained, and they had broken apart, laughing. Lucius had been kind for those few days and, in his letter to Father Christmas, Draco had begged for the season to last forever. 

It would be years until whispers of the Dark Lord’s return crept into the house and turned it cold, and that Christmas they had thought the world was theirs again. 

Harry opens his eyes and turns to him. “Speaking of Mrs Malfoy’s wand, where’s yours?”

“I burned it.” Draco says, and laughs slightly at the shocked look on Harry’s face. He doesn’t know if he can properly explain the fierce joy it gave him to snap it in half and throw it onto a bonfire, the delight of watching it explode into a million multicoloured sparks. They burned a lot in that fire, mostly Lucius’ items, but also several Dark books that various libraries and the Ministry didn’t want. 

“It held too many memories.” Draco says. “It had done too many things.”

Understanding dawns in Harry’s eyes and Draco has to look away, scared of finding pity there. But Harry shifts next to him and wraps his hand around Draco’s. The warmth sinks into his palm, flowing up his arm and around his heart. 

“Draco,” Harry says, and Draco steels his nerves and turns around. “Draco,” Harry says again, and his voice is impossibly tender. “I _understand._ ”

“Oh,” Draco says, and feels his heart stop and start again, just like the other reality he saw, yet completely different.

This time when it starts, he thinks everything else might have too. 

* * *

Something chirps loudly and Draco groans. A warm breeze floats across his face, ruffling his hair. He can smell grass and shampoo and distant freesias baking in the heat. He blinks his eyes open, wincing at the bright light. At some point during the night, the fort has fallen. He rolls over. Harry is grinning at him.

Harry. Sleep-rumpled, with tousled hair and pillow creases on his cheek. Harry, vines curled around him, blanket draped across his hips, sunlight fringing his eyelashes with gold. “Morning.” he says.

Draco loses his words along with his breath. He’s not entirely sure this is happening. Maybe it’s a dream. But that would mean he’s asleep- 

It hits him out of the blue, and it’s the first thing he says.

“I slept.”

Harry laughs and Draco says it louder, because he can, because Harry is bright and golden and laughing. “I slept!”

He throws the blanket back and clambers to his feet. Harry stands with him. “You slept.” he says softly.

Draco turns to look at him. There are leaves tangled in his hair and smudges of sleep around his eyes. He’s the most beautiful mystery Draco has ever encountered. Something flutters around his feet and he leans over to pick the piece of parchment up: _Planetesimal: one of the small celestial bodies that were fused together to form the planets of the solar system._

 _Of course,_ Draco thinks. _It was inevitable._

“What is it?” Harry asks.

Draco kisses him. 

 _Soft,_ he thinks. _Warm._

Harry pulls back slightly. “Nice.” he says, grins, and kisses Draco again. One arm encircles Draco’s back and the other hand is just starting to twist into Draco’s hair when something rumbles faintly. The vines begin to quiver violently. Sheets of parchment fly off the walls and fold into origami shapes. Two boys being fitted for robes, two boys fighting. Two boys flying on a broomstick as paper flames snap at their heels. Two boys on opposite sides, two boys in different galaxies, two boys kissing. 

There’s a noise like an eruption and all around them the vines explode into bloom. The flowers are like fireworks, reds and yellows and brilliant blues. Magenta and fuschia and periwinkle and lemon and bruised purple. Draco spins around in disbelief. The scent is overwhelming: years of memories - train carriages and wand sparks and classrooms and desserts and Quidditch pitches. Rain and sun and snow. 

“What’s happening?” Harry calls over the noise of a million flowers bursting into riotous colour. 

“They’re blooming!” Draco laughs, “It’s been months and they’re finally blooming!”

He turns to look at Harry and Harry is already looking at him. Looking, really looking. At the flower petals cascading over him, the joy he knows must be in his eyes, the flower tattoo bursting along his arm and covering his Dark Mark. Harry has seen him laugh, cry, bleed in an empty bathroom. Harry saved him, his mother saved Harry. Harry has listened to him talk about Greek myths and constellations and muggle literature for hours, listened to his stories and told him his own in return. Has seen him fall, break, heal, grow. 

Harry looks as if he can see right into him. 

“You’ve missed quite a bit.” Draco tells him.

“I think I kind of love you.” Harry says. 

Draco laughs. He brushes petals from Harry’s face and kisses him again.

 

_~ fin ~_

 

**Author's Note:**

> Ahhh! I'm finally finished! Maybe.  
> It may be short but I've spent half a year working on this and I'm kinda proud of my commitment to it. Thank you to a certain someone who kept hassling me to just FINISH it already because she wanted to read it.  
> Let me know what you think :)
> 
> A x
> 
>  
> 
> (come find me on tumblr! ameliebequiet)


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